军事刑事诉讼概念的反思与重塑

军事刑事诉讼既是国家刑事诉讼的有机组成部分,同时又是与普通刑事诉讼相对而言的一种特殊刑事诉讼。对国家刑事诉讼来说,二者是部分与整体的关系;对普通刑事诉讼来说,二者则是个别与一般的关系。军事刑事诉讼之所以有存在的必要,不是基于它的一般性,而是基于它的特殊性,本文所要探讨的正是后者。     

解读刑法第18条——兼谈对精神病人违法行为处理的不足和完善

司法实务中，人们对《刑法》第18条的理解有些偏差，如①对条文中提到的“精神病”只停留在精神医学的层面来加以解释；②错误地认为辨认能力和控制能力是法学条件；③错误地认为发病期的精神病人作案皆无罪或减罪；④错误地认为鉴定医生是评定刑事责任能力的主体。此外，该条规定需要完善，如①是否可考虑去掉第2款；②对有病无罪的那部分病人处理措施规定得太单一；③宜增加对吸毒者刑事责任能力的规定。     

Russia: new criminal process code promises a more tolerant incarceration policy

The population of Russian prisons is one of the largest in the world: as of 1 April 2002, there were 1,220,368 people living in prisons in the country. Some data suggest that 15 to 20 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS in Russia are in prisons and detention facilities.     

解读刑法第18条——兼谈对精神病人违法行为处理的不足和完善

司法实务中,人们对《刑法》第18条的理解有些偏差,如①对条文中提到的"精神病"只停留在精神医学的层面来加以解释;②错误地认为辨认能力和控制能力是法学条件;③错误地认为发病期的精神病人作案皆无罪或减罪;④错误地认为鉴定医生是评定刑事责任能力的主体。此外,该条规定需要完善,如①是否可考虑去掉第2款;②对有病无罪的那部分病人处理措施规定得太单一;③宜增加对吸毒者刑事责任能力的规定。     

The Russian Federation Needs a New Criminal Code

The 1996 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [CC RF] is very incomplete, as is particularly evident in many of its statutes. For instance, Article 2, Part 1, in defining the purpose of the code, cites the social values safeguarded by criminal law in a sequence corresponding to their relative importance in the Constitution of the Russian Federation: human rights and freedoms, property, public order, public safety, the environment, and the constitutional order of the Russian Federation.     

Public assistance of police during criminal investigations: Russian experience

This study examines the high levels of public unwillingness to assist police in criminal investigations in Russia. Variables of public trust of police, fear of crime, victimization, and prior contact with police are used to explain this phenomenon. Also included in the study are variables of police fear and avoidance of police. The findings suggest that higher levels of distrust in, as well as fear and avoidance of police are strong predictors of citizens’ unwillingness to assist police in Russia. The paper discusses potential implications of these findings for the 2011 police reform in Russia.     

Should the United States adopt a national substantive criminal code for serious offenses?

This article addresses the policy question: should the United States adopt a national substantive criminal code for serious offenses? Strangely enough, this issue has never been thoroughly considered. The author suggests that the current mobility of Americans requires a fresh look at the many issues involved, a number of which are raised and discussed. His conclusion is that careful consideration of the desirability and feasibility of a national code is now overdue.     

The unintended consequences of New Zealand's primary health care reforms

In 2001, the New Zealand government commenced a program to reform the organization of publicly funded primary care services. While there have been several positive results of this reform, including the reduction of patient co-payments and the extension of the range of primary care services, the government's program was a hastily implemented attempt to place primary care, the delivery of which is dominated by private doctors, under firm state control. It was also an attempt to override preexisting arrangements. As such, the government succeeded in its goal of establishing new primary health organizations (PHOs), but there were also significant unintended consequences. As detailed in this article, these consequences include (1) the creation of a labyrinthine funding and organizational system with a variable capacity to deliver on the government's reform objectives, (2) an increase in the power and scope of preexisting doctor organizations combined with a government unable to wrest control over the setting of patient co-payment levels, and (3) an emerging lack of clarity about future directions for the primary health care sector.     

俄罗斯民法典中私法自治原则的理性回归

前苏联时期，私法自治这一重要的民法基本原则遭到了根本否定。而前苏联解体后，在新颁布实施的《俄罗斯联邦民法典》中，则对这一原则又给予了重新肯定，使其得以实现回归。本文拟对其私法自治原则回归的理论准备、精神内核以及回归后的司法尝试活动进行探讨，以期拓展对俄罗斯民事立法的理论认识。     

Premenstrual tension as mitigation in a criminal case.

A woman pleaded guilty to road traffic offences and was sentenced to be disqualified for holding or obtaining a driving licence for six months. Her appeal against that sentence was allowed on the basis that she was suffering from premenstrual tension at the time of the offences, and that the disqualification imposed was neither necessary nor appropriate.     

Postpartum depression syndrome as a defense to criminal behavior

Though history records that women have suffered from PPD for centuries, little attention is directed to this serious malady in today's medical and legal communities. Medical research indicates that PPD is the result of the physical stress of pregnancy and childbirth, the social stress of the mothering role, or a combination of both. There are four phases of PPD: maternity blues, postnatal exhaustion, postnatal depression and puerperal psychosis. Victims of puerperal psychosis manifest bizarre behaviors — including the murder of their own children. Approximately 18 cases in the United States have involved the use of PPD as a defense to murder. British medical and legal authorities recognize PPD as a serious women's health issue, and as a viable insanity defense. Legal experts in the United States believe that the PPD defense will be used more frequently in this country. A review of the basic principles of the insanity defense supports the admission of this defense in legal proceedings.     

The roots of Russian organized crime: from old-fashioned professionals to the organized criminal groups of today

This study focuses on the development of persons and organizations in the successor states of the Soviet Union, with an emphasis on Russia. It examines the development of criminal professionalism in Russia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and argues that exiling peasants to Siberia contributed to the development of a criminal underworld and the creation of a professional criminal underclass. In the early to late Soviet periods, vory v zakone, or “thieves-in-law,” evolved together with criminal groups as a means to survive in the GULAG, these criminal groups operating within the Soviet prisons and penal colonies. Inadequacies of the Soviet system of central planning led to the criminalization of the Soviet economy and the emergence of the thieves-in-law as critical players. Activities such as racketeering, robbery, and other crimes were dangerous but predominantly secondary. The roots of the Russian mafia lie in the innermost depths of the Russian shadow economy. Some of the key aspects of the post-Soviet privatization process are analyzed together with the interaction between various levels of the Russian government and organized crime groups. It is argued that the state was not corrupted by organized crime groups, but rather the organized crime groups became the state. In the new Russia, organized crime groups and corrupt government executives work together to generatea new criminal state.     

The Lessons of a Russian

It appears that immediately after the Central Electoral Commission totalled up the preliminary results, postelection fever and hysteria broke out, embracing not only politicians and journalists but a portion of the public as well, and that very widespread myths took hold, serving as the base on which public consciousness has attempted to adapt to a new political reality. A calm professional analysis now shows, however, that much of what happened to us simply could not have occurred otherwise, that clear roots and obvious causes existed. There is much we simply did not want to notice or to acknowledge, while attempting to pass off the desirable for the real and reality for a myth. But timidity of the mind has taken its toll, and the time has now come to draw some lessons.